you can hide away anything in it. What does it mean to be human, as opposed to being American? I believe in signs, kind of jokingly: But here, after a week of hag- gling over ten cents for a day's worth of food for Russian prisoners, I open the paper and the basic message of Clinton's State of the Union is how are we going to get rid of this huge budget surplus. We were in Moscow central prison two days ago. We were in Mome Michel. What do you have to do to erase the people in those places? How do you say this with- out sounding like some se]f-important assho1e? I now know the choices I made are the right ones for me. I feel happy: Satisfied. Not se]f-satisfied. I'm not satis- fied about this loan to Russia. It's a loan. What does it mean to be human, instead of a cockroach? Solidarity; compassion, sympathy; and love." He glanced out the airplane window, and began telling me a story: Back be- fore Zanmi Lasante, he said-when he was twenty-three, volunteering as a doc- tor's assistant in a hospital in Léogâne, in Haiti-he had a long talk with an American doctor, a kindly man who seemed to love the Haitians. The doctor had worked there for a year. Now he was departing. "Isn't it going to be hard to leave?" Farmer asked him. '1\re you kidding? I can't wait. There's no electricity here. It's just brutal here." "But aren't you worried about not being able to forget all this? There's so much disease here." " N " . d th d " I ' Am 0, Sa! e octor. m an er- ican, and I'm going home." Farmer thought about that conver- sation all day and into the evening. "What does that mean, 'I'm an Amer- ican'? How do people classify them- selves?" He thought the doctor's answer was sensible, a legitimate answer. But he didn't know his own. He was sup- posed to start medical school himse]f in the fall. I'm definitely going to be a doctor, he thought. Farmer fidgeted in the narrow air- plane seat. "So later on that night, a young woman came in. She was preg- nant, and she had malaria. . . . It's not as if it hasn't happened since." He stopped, his face turned to the window again. "She had a very high parasitimia. Bad malaria. She went into a coma and, you know, I didn't know the details then. I do now, because it's my specialt}: She needed a transfusion, and her sister was there and-" It was drizzling outside. He stared out at the runway landscape, gray and dull, crying softly: "It's not about her. It happens all the time in Haiti, but I didn't know that then. So there was no blood at the hos- pital, and the doctor told her sister to go to Port-au-Prince to get some blood. But she would need some money: I had no money. I ran around the hospital. I rounded up fifteen dollars. I gave her the money and she left, and then she came back, and she didn't have enough money to go to Port-au-Prince. So meanwhile the patient started having respiratory distress. And this pink stuff started com- ing out of her mouth, and the nurses were saying, 'It's hopeless,' and other people were saying, 'We should do a ce- sarean delivery.' I said, 'There's got to be some way to get her some blood.' Her sister was beside herselE She was sob- bing and crying. The woman had jive '*'.... (1 ,",',,"',,', . ... ' , -: ,', " " , .: .... .. . .... . .-. . :": ....:.;.. '-:-:'"':.'. . ;.":. ..: .::-:: . .: .." . ":.'. -: 'on . :' .i:..:. .,;;:: '.: .:; ".-=:: . :::. : ; : :.... ::: ., :::-: ".;: " ':'\;;1::;:-,,:,.. ':';',::.Y" "",. . """"",,,,-,,. " '-- kids. The sister said, 'This is terrible. You can't even get a blood transfusion if you're poor.' And she said, 'We're all human beings.' She said that again and again. 'We're all human beings.' " The flight crew was preparing the cabin for takeoff In a moment, Farmer would start feeling sick. "My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not re- member. I'm not a dour person. But I have a terrible message. And I'm not gonna put my seat in an upright position." He had recovered his normal voice. The death was a memory again. He said, quoting the sister once more, " 'We're all human beings.' As if in answer to my question." He shook his head. "The other thing about it is, I knew that the physicians and the others fo- cussed on my reaction. The nurses were saying, 'Poor Paul. What a sweet young man.' And the doctors thought, He's new here, he's green, he's naïve." He paused. "Yeah, but I got staying power. That's the thing. I wasn't naïve, in fact.". 1F . ;:& , " '.&- * "Wi:. 'f .0 :') , '- (2 "1 can't help feeling a little suspicious. One half is to be run by BlII Gates, and the other half by someone called Gil Bates"